Jack Ryan
JOHN "JACK" PATRICK RYAN SR. (May 17th, 1950 – July 13th, 2042) President of the United States “''When Mum and Dad put me on that plane to visit my cousins in England, they told me, 'Son, you're special, you were born to do great things.' You know what? They were right.” - Jack Ryan John Patrick Ryan Sr. – better known as "Jack" – is among the most important figures of the late 20th Century, acting as head of the United States during one of its most turbulent periods. : History Childhood Born in 1950, Jack is the illegitimate son of Andrew "James" Ryan and Jasmine Jolene, Ryan's mistress. While pregnant, Jolene suffered some financial difficulties and decided to sell Jack, as an embryo, to Dr. Brigid Tenenbaum on behalf of Frank Fontaine, without consulting Ryan. Jack was to be Fontaine's back-up plan if he was ever forced into an unfavorable situation by Ryan, which happened during Rapture's Civil War. Jack was "born" and "grown" by the scientists of Fontaine Futuristics, including Dr. Yi Suchong and Brigid Tenenbaum. According to Audio Diaries by Dr. Yi Suchong, who was responsible for Jack's development, Jack, by the age of one, weighed fifty-eight pounds and had the "gross musculature of a fit nineteen-year-old", thanks to Lot 111. Dr. Suchong also reveals in another Audio Diary that he was responsible for the mind control imprinting that Frank Fontaine requested. Jack's similar genetic structure to Andrew Ryan meant that he would be able to use the city's bathyspheres that were in lockdown, be resurrected at Vita-Chambers, and the automated security of Rapture would not be as effective against him. Sometime in 1958, before Fontaine faked his own death in a shoot out with Chief of Security Sullivan's forces, Jack was smuggled out of Rapture in a bathysphere and sent to the surface as a sleeper agent, living out his pre-programmed life as Jack Wynand, until Frank Fontaine "activated" him. Jack was 9 years old but looked like and thought like an adult. Return to Rapture Upon Fontaine's summons, using the trigger phrase "Would You Kindly", Jack boarded a plane in 1960 that passed near Rapture's location in the North Atlantic, then hijacked it, forcing it to crash land at the coordinates of the Lighthouse, the main entrance to Rapture. Jack arrived in Rapture in a Bathysphere taken from the lighthouse on the surface. In the beginning, he explored the different areas of Rapture under the guidance of Atlas, who spoke to him through a short wave radio. Jack's main objective, at first, was to find a functional bathysphere that would return him to the surface. Atlas promised to help him if in return Jack would save his trapped family in the ''Neptune's Bounty area. This proved to be more difficult than it seemed at first, as Andrew Ryan noticed the intrusion and cut off access to Neptune, keeping close tabs on Jack and setting Security Devices and Splicers on him from then on. Jack was forced to detour through the Medical Pavilion, encountering the deranged cosmetic surgeon J.S. Steinman. Here, Jack met Brigid Tenenbaum for the first time. She implored him not to hurt the Little Sisters, and gave Jack a way to rescue them, although Atlas advised against it. When Jack finally reached Neptune's Bounty he made his way to the Smuggler's Hideout where Atlas's family were allegedly trapped in a submarine. Jack was supposed to meet Atlas there, but when he entered the control booth to open the submarine, Andrew Ryan made his move, sending a wave of Splicers that forced Atlas to flee and destroy the sub, apparently killing Atlas' wife and son. Jack escaped through a tunnel to Arcadia, and Atlas informed him that their new objective was to put an end to Andrew Ryan. Jack made his way through Arcadia, the Farmer's Market, and Fort Frolic, facing numerous obstacles. In Fort Frolic, Jack made the discovery that Jasmine Jolene was Ryan's murdered lover, although he did not realize the significance of this at first. While trapped at Fort Frolic, Jack was forced to work for Sander Cohen and assassinate his former disciples for one of Cohen's deranged works of "art." Eventually, Jack reached Hephaestus, where Atlas asked him, "Now, would you kindly head to Ryan's office and kill the son of a bitch? It's time to finish this." Ryan had set up strong defenses, but Jack eventually breached them and entered Rapture Central Control only to find that Ryan had set the entire complex to self destruct, which would also destroy the city. Jack entered Ryan's office and sees the "Would You Kindly" board upon which Ryan has connected all the evidence about Jack's true past. Jack finally encountered Ryan for the first time. Ryan proved that Jack had been a slave under the control of Atlas the entire time, saying "A man chooses, a slave obeys." Ryan revealed to Jack that Atlas was controlling him via the phrase "Would you Kindly" which was repeated every time Atlas wanted Jack to do something. Ryan then handed Jack a golf club and ordered Jack to kill him. Jack obeyed, beating his father to death, and took his Genetic Key to shut down the self-destruct mechanism. Finally, Atlas revealed his true identity as Frank Fontaine and thanked Jack for handing the keys to Rapture to him. He tried to kill Jack with the city's security devices, but Jack was led to an escape route by Tenenbaum's Little Sisters. Jack entered a vent only to have it collapse under him and was knocked unconscious. Jack woke up in Tenenbaum's Sanctuary, where she informed him that while he slept she removed most of the mental conditioning that Dr. Suchong put in his mind. Jack was no longer vulnerable to the "Would You Kindly" command, but Fontaine quickly proved that he still had control over Jack by activating the phrase "Code Yellow." This caused Jack's heart to begin the slow process of shutting down. With the help of Tenenbaum, Jack found the cure for the conditioning, a chemical produced by Dr. Suchong called Lot 192. Finally, Jack completely freed himself from Fontaine's mind control. Once he was free, Tenenbaum urged him to go after Fontaine and take his revenge, Fontaine obliged by challenging Jack to a showdown. However, in order to pursue Fontaine, Jack was forced to "become" a Big Daddy to trick a Little Sister into thinking he was one of their protectors. However, this transformation was not complete, as he did not have the suit grafted onto him (he never wore the gloves, either), nor was his mind altered in the process. The only physical change he undertook was the automated vocal cord surgery, which Frank Fontaine (truthfully or not) warned over the radio was irreversible in an attempt to stop him. Afterward, Jack confronted a heavily spliced Fontaine. Jack was knocked to the ground by Fontaine. When Fontaine was about to attack Jack, a group of Little Sisters pounced on Fontaine with the hypodermic syringes they used to extract ADAM out of corpses, killing Fontaine. Jack escaped to the surface with at five Little Sisters, which Ryan adopted. He returned to repair one of the resurrection chambers in a successful attempt to resurrect Andrew Ryan and took him to the surface. As a result of his plane crash, he developed a fear of flying that would persist for years. Allegedly he became a god to the Splicers in Rapture, with some stories contradicting his actions afterwards, including that he destroyed the surface world, now rules as President and threatens to destroy Rapture with a Nuke if they step out of Line, and that he took Andrew Ryan to Hell. After leaving, he realized he stopped aging quickly. He continued to lie about his true age. Military Career Ryan attended Boston College, graduating with a bachelor's degree in Economics (strong minor in history) and later became a Second Lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps, passing the School of Infantry, and Officer Candidate School, and later became his infantry unit's strong man. Ryan passed the Certified Public Accountant exam while waiting for the Marines to assign him to a duty station. After finishing The Basic his military career was cut short at the age of 23(1973), when as part of the Atlantic, his platoon's helicopter, a CH-46 Sea Knight, crashed during a NATO exercise over the Greek island of Crete. Ryan's back was badly injured in the crash. Surgeons at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda made inadequate repairs to his back. This led to a lengthy recovery process (during which he was nearly addicted to pain medications) after which, complete with a permanent disability and wearing a back brace, he left the Marine Corps. He passed his stock broker's exam and took a position with the Baltimore office of the Wall Street investment firm Merrill Lynch. While managing clients' portfolios, he began to invest his own money, banking on a tip he had received from an uncle about the workers' takeover of the Chicago and North Western Railroad, making approximately $6 million off his $100,000 initial investment. He did so well that a senior VP of Merrill Lynch, Joe Muller, came to Baltimore to have dinner with him, with the objective of inviting him to the New York City headquarters. Also present was Muller's daughter Caroline, nicknamed "Cathy", then a senior medical student at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. They immediately fell in love and got engaged. One night, while having dinner with his fiancée, Ryan threw out his back and Cathy took him directly to Dr. Stanley Rabinowitz, professor of neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins, to be evaluated. Rabinowitz later operated on Ryan's back and cured his chronic pain in relatively short order. Ryan subsequently persuaded the government to terminate his disability checks. Cathy later became an ophthalmic surgeon at the Wilmer Eye Institute of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a Professor of Surgery at Johns Hopkins. After having his net worth assessed at $8 million, Ryan left the firm after four years and enrolled at Georgetown University for his doctorate courses in history. He did a brief stint at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, then accepts a position at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland as a civilian professor of history. First CIA Work Following a recommendation of Father Tim O'Riley, PhD, S.J., (a Georgetown University professor) to a CIA contact, Ryan was asked to work as an outside consultant for the Agency, although officially employed by MITRE Corporation. He agreed and spent several months in Langley, Virginia, where he wrote a paper entitled "Agents and Agencies", in which he maintains that state-sponsored terrorism is an act of war. He also invented the canary trap, a method for exposing an information leak, which involves giving different versions of a sensitive document to each of a group of suspects and seeing which version gets leaked. By making sure that each copy of the document differs slightly in its wording, if any copy is leaked then it is possible to determine the identity of the informant. Both of these accomplishments came to the attention of Admiral James Greer, the Deputy Director Intelligence at the CIA. The expertise of Ryan's report, plus the application, persuaded Admiral Greer to offer him a permanent job in the CIA, but Ryan turned it down. While Ryan was still teaching at the Naval Academy, he and his family (wife, daughter Sally, and at least four other daughters) took a trip to London for research and vacationing. After spending the day sifting through British Navy archives doing research for a book on the British naval war in the Indian Ocean during World War II, Ryan walked to meet his family at a London park. As he joined them, members of the Ulster Liberation Army, an ultra-violent Maoist offshoot of the IRA, headed by a man named Kevin O'Donnell, attacked a car containing the Prince of Wales and his family right in front of Ryan, his wife, and his daughter. Ryan intervened in the attack and foiled their plan, wounding one gunman and killing the other, who fired simultaneously and wounded Ryan. Sean Miller, the man he wounded, vowed revenge on Ryan and his family. But since he was going to Albany Prisonon the Isle of Wight, the threat didn't seem serious. After being invested as a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order by the Queen, Ryan returned to the U.S. and the Academy. When O'Donnell and the ULA sprung Miller on his way to Albany Prison (killing both police officers and civilians in the process), Ryan and his family became the target of their revenge—particularly Miller's. CIA Career Admiral James Greer came to Ryan and asked him to return to join the CIA permanently as an analyst to help track down the terrorists. He declined initially, only to accept it later after a failed attack on himself and his family by the ULA severely injured his wife and daughter when Miller fires off a full clip from a Uzi on a freeway in 1981. Later, while Ryan hosted the Prince and Princess of Wales at his home in Maryland, the ULA made a second attack on the Ryans, which was foiled by Jack, the Prince, and Commander Robert Jackson, USN who killed several of the terrorists and managed to get reinforcements . Following the incident and arrest of the ULA who are purposely not extradited by the British Government who let them get sentenced to the death penalty in Maryland ( Gas Chamber), he was re-assigned to London as a member of a liaison group to the British Secret Intelligence Service. Ryan's assignment to London focused on a daring mission to assist the defection of a KGB communications-center officer who had discovered that KGB director Yuri Andropov had ordered the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II. Although Ryan and a small team of British agents helps the "Rabbit" and his family get to the West, they failed to prevent the attack on the Pope. Nevertheless, "Rabbit's" defection proved to be a major coup for both American and British intelligence. Ryan soon afterward suggested a non-military strategy to help hasten the USSR's collapse. Red October Incident Captain First Rank Marko Ramius, the Soviet Navy's top submarine commander, took command of the Красный Октябрь (Red October), the newest Typhoon Class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine. Ramius's mission was to test the sub's new silent "Caterpillar" drive, but Ramius and a select group of his officers were actually planning to sail the submarine to the coast of the United States and defect. When Soviet officials in Moscow received a letter from Ramius informing them of this, they sent out most of the Soviet Northern Fleet with orders to find and destroy the Red October. Secret photographs of the Red October were delivered to Ryan. He showed them to several naval officers familiar with missile submarines. From there he went to the Pentagon and finally to the White House. With the President's approval, a plan was created whereby, when the Red October approached the American coastline, it would be captured and hidden. At the same time, an older U.S. submarine would be intentionally destroyed and sunk in that vicinity. Then the Soviets would be informed it was the Red October. This began a week of intense search efforts, where Soviet, American, and British surface ships, submarines, and helicopters were all deployed in what became a hide-and-seek operation. When Ryan and a Royal Marine Lieutenant, Owen Williams from the Royal Navy Aircraft Carrier Invincible finally boarded the Red October, more problems arose. Ryan heard a gunshot in another part of the Red October and he made his way to the submarine's missile room with Captain Ramius. There they encountered a GRU operative covered as a member of the ship's crew who was attempting to sink the Red October by activating one of her solid-fuel missiles with the launch tube hatch closed, which would incinerate everyone on board. The GRU agent had already killed Captain Lieutenant Gregoriy Kamarov, one of Red October's officers, and wounded Owen Williams. Ryan was forced to kill the GRU operative to prevent the destruction of the ship. After being hit by a torpedo from an Alfa-class Soviet attack submarine, the heavily damaged Red October, having rammed and destroyed its opponent, was still able to advance unseen into the U.S. Naval Shipyard at Portsmouth, Virginia. The defectors were lodged at a CIA safe house near Charlottesville, Virginia and Ryan flew back home in time for Christmas. Ryan was later reassigned to Langley. He became Greer's assistant with the official title of Special Assistant to the Deputy Director for Intelligence. Greer was grooming the rising analyst for bigger and better positions, maybe even his own job when the veteran spy finally retired. Ryan was dispatched to Moscow as part of the American strategic nuclear weapons reduction negotiation team. There he met Sergey Golovko, a rising star in the KGB hierarchy, and eventually became entangled in a complex web related to both the race to develop "Star Wars" space-based defensive technology and engineer another defection, this time compromising the KGB director to save the CIA's highest informant in the USSR, Agent CARDINAL, better known as Colonel Misha Filitov. Although they initially met as adversaries—literally at gunpoint on one of the runway of Moscow's main airport — Golovko respected him as a worthy adversary and in later novels becomes friends with Ryan, whom he calls "Андрей Раяновский"(Andrey Rayanovsky) giving him a Russian-style patronymic based on his father's name, Andrew Ryan. Ryan was then promoted to acting DDI when Greer was hospitalized with cancer. Despite this he was kept out of the loop on a highly covert and illegal CIA operation approved by corrupt US National Security Adviser Admiral Cutter. This operation targeted Colombian drug lords using military assets, in what was usually considered a law enforcement area. Ryan eventually worked with the FBI to rescue a small group of American soldiers cut off in the Colombian wilderness, which forced him to miss Greer's funeral. Around this time Ryan also ran afoul of Elizabeth Elliott, international affairs adviser to Presidential Candidate Ohio Governor J. Robert Fowler, and a former professor of Cathy Ryan's. Ryan then reached his highest post at the CIA; Deputy Director of Central Intelligence. His career was placed in jeopardy when Fowler became President and Elizabeth Elliott became both National Security Adviser and Fowler's lover/manipulator. They not only denied Ryan any credit for an innovative Middle East Peace Plan, but also panicked when terrorists detonated a nuclear bomb in Denver during the Super Bowl and nearly plunged the world into a Soviet-American nuclear war. Ryan defused the nuclear crisis by commandeering the Washington-Moscow hot line and convinced the Soviet premier (through his friend Golovko) that the crisis was a setup. He then refused to confirm Fowler's order to launch a nuclear missile at Qom (thus preventing the attack), where the Iranian Ayatollah lived. The crisis effectively ended both Fowler's administration and Ryan's career at the CIA. Presidency Ryan returned to government service to deal with the Eugenics Wars and help battle Japan, who had decided to resurrect their imperial ambitions and the United States. For a brief time Ryan was the National Security Adviser, but when Vice President Ed Kealty was forced to resign after a sex scandal, President Roger Durling taps him for the job. Ryan accepted the Office of Vice President on the condition that it was only until the end of Durling's current term. He saw this as a way of ending his public life. He was barely confirmed by Congress when a Japanese airline pilot deliberately crashed his 747 onto the Capitol during a joint session of Congress, killing most of the people inside, decapitating the U.S. government, and elevating Ryan to the Presidency. The reluctant yet determined Ryan Administration emerged as Ryan slowly rebuilt the government. He was faced with political trickery by Ed Kealty, and a deadly plague initiated by the newly formed United Islamic Republic, resulting in two major military conflicts far from American shores. Ryan had completed Durling's term as President and had campaigned for—and won—the next Presidential election. He retained most of his emergency Cabinet and had Robby Jackson as Vice President. The first, and most important, crisis of the Ryan Administration was the rising threat in the Middle East. After the killing of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in a Canadian Gas Attack, Ayatollah Daryaei led and unopposed invasion of Iraq and, combined with his own Iran, formed the United Islamic Republic. With backing by China and India, The UIR staged a serious of terrorist attacks on US soil, including the use of biological warfare via a new airborne Ebola strain, in an attempt to cripple the country and remove it from power in the Middle East. Without the US to intervene, the UIR invaded Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in an attempt to further expand their power. However, Ryan's choice to heavily regulate travel leads to the failure of the Ebola attack, and US soldiers were sent to protect their interests, quickly defeating the UIR in the Second Persian Gulf War. After a failed assassination attempt by Daryaei, Ryan orders an assassination on the Ayatollah, effectively destroying the UIR. In the aftermath, a number of splinter nations were formed, such as a re-established Iraq, the Sunni nation of Qumar, and the Sacred Republic of Munma. This order becomes the first and only invocation of the Ryan Doctrine. Due to the terrorist and biological attacks on the country, Ryan announced to the world that America would not tolerate any attacks on its territory, possessions, or citizens, and anyone who orders such attacks will be held accountable. This superseded the executive order put in place by President MacNeil, forbidding the assassination of foreign heads of state; however, Ryan believed it a more ethical choice than war, as it punishes individuals instead of peoples on the whole. Ryan had to deal with the attempted assassination of Golovko, head of the SVR (formerly the KGB) who narrowly escaped a Rocket propelled Grenade. This turned out to be an attempt to sow confusion in the Russian government because of China's designs to annex Eastern Siberia, where geologists had discovered a large amount of oil and gold. These events eventually lead to the inclusion of Russia into NATO and the assistance of U.S. Forces in the Sino-Russian War. When the Chinese began losing the war, U.S. forces began to target their strategic assets. An SSN sank a Chinese SSBN, which caused the Chinese Politburo to panic and to increase the readiness of their 12 land-based ICBMs. U.S. Forces did not have the ability to destroy the silos, as they could only use deep penetrating bombs, which had all been used to destroy Chinese bridges to disrupt the PLA's logistical support. This caused the U.S. and Russia to send a joint RAINBOW and Spetsnaz team to destroy the silos. They destroyed 11 of the 12 ICBMs but one of them managed to launch. The warhead headed towards Washington, DC; and with Ryan taking command of an Aegis missile cruiser, the ICBM was intercepted by ABM's from the USS Gettysburg. With the looming defeat of the PLA in Siberia, which they learned about via live UAV broadcasts from the CIA through the Internet, student demonstrators in Beijing raided the Politburo, which caused a conservative minister to take control and arrest the perpetrators of the war in Siberia and surrender to the U.S. and Russia. This event turned the former Cold War rivals of the United States and Russia into close allies via the CoDominium, effectively ending the Cold War through the melting of tensions.''' '''The Soviet Union changed until it practically existed in name only, aided by the reopening of Democratic elections and the rise of Figures such Illya Kuryakin and Natasha Romanoff, Russian presidents more willing to work with America rather than against it. Following this, Ryan apparently completed his term as president and refused to run for a second elected term. Robby Jackson thus campaigned to become the second African American President, but a member of the Ku Klux Klan assassinated him on a trip to the South, which enabled Jack Stanton to become the next President. Before Ryan actually left office, he created "The Campus," a secret counter-terrorism organization that fronts as Hendley Associates, a financial trading company. He also wrote Presidential pardons out to all of its members, with the assistance of his Attorney General Pat Martin. Finally he instituted the "Designated Survivor" protocol in the event of a similar attack as the one which elevated him to the Presidency were to take place. He was President from 1992 to 1993, taking the shorter Presidential terms of the time. As James Marshall In his retirement, Ryan was living easy with a comfortable net worth of over $80 million. He was currently working on two versions of his memoirs, one for immediate release, and another detailing his career at CIA, to be published posthumously. However, he had decided to run for a second term as President due to the fact that Jack Stanton, had been unable to govern effectively and had undone many of the reforms the Ryan Administration put in place. Following several unpopular Presidents, and the Alien Invasions of 1996, Ryan's plan was put into place, seeking to gain support from his followers in rapture, who hated Andrew Ryan and were not aware Jack was his son, Jack renamed himself James Marshall, and underwent plastic surgery. Supposedly he took the name "James" because that was a name his Father used to have while serving as a Private during World War II. Ryan as James Marshall became President in 1996. His most notable event is fighting off a terrorist takeover of Air Force One singlehandedly. He chose not to run again after repairing he country. He was succeeded by Bud Hammond. Hammond, however, was caught in office with a young girl, and attempted to deflect attention from the crisis by staging a fake war with Albania. Eventually, however, the scandal did break, and the President faced impeachment due to perjury in reference to the affair; with little support, he refused to run for a second term. Instead, Democratic Party nominee Governor Jed Bartlet of New Hampshire was elected as the next President of the United States, and the country began a slow return to normalcy. Ryan lived for many years after his Presidency, however, he never returned to public office. He remained fondly remembered by the American public, and his policies continued long past his term, through "The Campus," a counter-terrorist organization founded by his administration. Eventually, Jack Ryan Jr. became an analyst for The Campus. With a net worth of over $80 million, Ryan remained retired on the whole – despite propositions from organizations such as the Jacks of All Trades. However, he did complete his two memoirs – one published during his life, and another, detailing his work with the CIA, posthumously. With the rise of the theocratic Republic of Gilead, Ryan chose to remain in Washington FDC, loyal to the United States to the end and led a resistance against the organization, though he would see the end of Nehemiah Scudder, though the Republic of Gilead would survive for some time. He died peacefully in 2042, mourned as a true American hero. Category:Composite Characters Category:Americans Category:Heroes Category:US Presidents Category:Republicans